Govt cuts coconut tree to size; Act passed

| JANUARY 15, 2016, 12:00 AM IST

PANAJI

The Goa Assembly passed the Goa Preservation of Trees Act, seeking to change the definition of a tree as well as to remove the ‘coconut tree’ from the definition of trees amid a walkout by the Opposition.

Opposition member Aleixo Reginaldo also moved an amendment to the bill, which was defeated when it was put to a vote.

The bill witnessed an hour-long discussion on the issue of trees with the Opposition accusing the government of facilitating the demise of the identity of Goa.

“The Government should have rather named the bill as the Goa Destruction of Trees Act. The treasury benches are only talking about preserving trees and that they will bring an Act on the lines of Philippines to protect coconut trees. Why don’t you bring that Act first?” Vijai Sardessai asked.

He found the support of former chief minister Digambar Kamat who said he had deliberately included a new section to bring coconut trees under the Act in a bid to arrest the decline of Goa’s coconut production.

“Earlier Goa was an exporter of coconuts. Today we have to import,” Kamat said.

The unamended act defines a tree as “any woody plant whose branches spring from and are supported upon a trunk or body and whose trunk or body is not less than five centimeter in diameter at a height of thirty centimeters from the ground level and is not less than one metre in height from the ground level.”

The bill also seeks to remove section 1A which reads as “notwithstanding anything in the Goa, Daman and Diu Preservation of Trees Act, 1984 or in any other Act for the time being in force, the term “tree” used in this Act, shall, besides other trees, include coconut trees” besides other changes.

Sanguem MLA Subhash Phaldesai, who has been in a center of a storm over the amendment, defended the bill saying, currently the process of getting permission to cut a coconut tree was long and arduous and ailing trees often remained, precariously posing a threat to life and limb.

“Despite bringing it under the ambit of the Act, there has been no change in trends,” he said.

He found the support of other members of the ruling benches who all blamed the lengthy, arduous process as a trigger of the changes.

In response, independent MLA Rohan Khaunte said that permission of tree felling was already mentioned in the list of time bound delivery of services and hence their contentions were redundant.

Congress MLA Mauvin Godinho called for the bill to be sent to a Select Committee in order to ascertain the mood of the people.

Under the new bill, a tree is defined as “any woody plant whose branches spring from and are supported upon the trunk or the body and whose trunk or body is not less than ten centimeters in diameter at a height of one meter from the ground level.”

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